


rock salt, boiling water, sinking ship

by the merienes tranch (lilhalphys)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Self-Harm, i was tempted to call this slow burn but. Not Quite Slow., slightly nonlinear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-08-27 22:13:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16711012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilhalphys/pseuds/the%20merienes%20tranch
Summary: “But you like him?” Beau asks.-everything that happened with caleb and fjord, except not exactly.





	1. rock salt

“But you like him?” Beau asks.

-

Few families in Blumenthal were ever able to afford salt while Caleb lived there. Those that were lucky enough, Caleb’s included, used it exclusively to preserve the little meat they could procure for as long as possible. Only the richest could ever spare it for seasoning other things, and only once did Caleb ever see it used for anything else.

He had been young, the winter cold. A woman, from one of the richest families in the town, however little that said, had thrown a bit of the stuff at him as he’d passed, cursing his small, pathetic form. The pinch of salt had landed on the ground at his feet, and he had watched the grains sink into the thick covering of snow, liquefying and distorting an otherwise plain surface.

He had been young, then, but old enough to know enough that it wasn’t magic he was watching before his eyes, but young enough to wonder, for a moment.

-

Caleb knows his parents fell in love at first sight. He knows because they told him, and he had wondered whether it was true then, but he does not wonder now. Caleb’s parents would never have lied about something important, and love, he’s learned, is so, so important.

Caleb does not fall in love with Fjord at first sight. 

It all starts at the Academy, and it all starts with Astrid.

She is something like ethereal, something beyond what little he has seen from the windows of his rotten wooden house. Her hair glows like fire in the dewy sunrise, framing her face as it blows, crackles in the wind.

She is laughing, and she is holding him close. She is a good dancer, and she is a better kisser, and

he is in love with her.

He is, she is, she was, and she never will be again.

-

It all starts with Astrid, and it all starts again with Fjord.

Fjord is impressed with his magic, for starters.

The spells are rudimentary, basic, the kind he taught himself before anyone from Soltryce ever went scouting in Blumenthal. They were drudgery to relearn, and if Ikithon had caught him using such simple spells unless he had nothing else left in his arsenal, he’d have been severely punished. 

Fjord is impressed with Chromatic Orb, with the way Caleb shoots ice out of his hands, and Fjord is impressed with Fire Bolt, and Fjord is impressed, and Caleb doesn’t quite like it, and

Caleb doesn’t quite hate it.


	2. boiling water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caleb remembers going down to the river with his father when he was younger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im hsfhhsdhfdhs i guess. widofjord rights.

Caleb doesn’t think about Fjord again until later, until after they’ve all, as a group, done something worth talking about. 

Fjord and Caleb talk about being a group instead.

Caleb thinks about his twitchy hands, his itchy trigger finger and the gaping exit wound where his perfect life and family once stood, and he wonders, distantly, why in the nine hells Fjord would defer to him as some sort of co-leader.

But Fjord is confident, so Caleb will do the best he can to keep his fingers pointed away from the group, and they’ll “make it work,” as it were.

-

Caleb remembers going down to the river with his father when he was younger.

The river was where he would bathe, and the water would be cold, and his father was alive.

He remembers the itchy tickling of icy water droplets trailing down his back, just out of reach as he waited for the wind to dry him off. He remembers the way the fresh but still gritty water tasted and felt against his tongue and the way it slipped past his lips when he laughed, half underwater.

Once, in the dead of winter, when he was older but not by much, just enough so that he could bathe in the river alone, he threw Bolt after Bolt into the current until it was warm enough to bathe in comfortably. He had watched bits of snow by the river bed slough off into the river, melting as they slipped downstream. Somehow, it was less impressive when he knew it was magic.

-

It doesn’t last.

There is something unsettling, but not unfamiliar, about how quickly Fjord pulls his sword from the marine ether and puts it to Caleb’s throat. 

“Leave no trace,” Fjord says.

Fjord is impressed with Caleb’s magic, and it would be nothing to level him, to burn him where he stands before Caleb with that exact feat. It would be easy, and Caleb would have his scroll, and Caleb would have his answers, and Caleb would not have something greater.

Protection. An ally. Any allies. Anybody to be really proud of him.

_ Leave no trace, _ Caleb sneers at the saltwater stain on the carpet.

-

It doesn’t last, but it moves forward.

He kisses Fjord because it's convenient.

They’re on watch together. The night is bitter and biting, and his only choices are to sit by Fjord or ever closer to the fire.

Fjord is interested, and he’d much rather Fjord be interested than curious.

So he kisses Fjord, and

-

Nobody could have ever dreamed of affording saltwater taffy in Blumenthal. Candy was a rare luxury, period, and the fact that the ocean was miles upon miles away made it all the more expensive.

But the Soltryce Academy provides a bountiful per diem, and Trent never technically takes it away, however often he “forgets” to give it to them. 

Astrid, Astrid likes saltwater taffy quite a bit. Caleb doesn’t particularly like it. But, sometimes, he says he hates it because, sometimes, occasionally, Astrid pops a piece of it in her mouth and kisses him with it. It's kinda gross, and not just because he doesn’t particularly like saltwater taffy, but it’s good, and it’s wonderful, and

-

Fjord doesn’t taste like saltwater taffy. Caleb is surprised by how much that saddens him.


	3. sinking ship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What does this all mean to you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE HEED THE NEW TAGS. warnings for self harm do not exceed the events of the "blood ritual" as it happened in canon. but they are discussed, so please proceed with caution

They don’t make any sort of habit of kissing each other, though Caleb does make a habit of thinking about it.

“You’re obvious,” Molly says. “But that’s okay.”

“How do you mean?” 

“You're still here, for one.”

“I-“

“I know flighty, Caleb, and you’ve got it written all over your face.”

“I am not going anywhere. We are a group, ja?”

Molly pauses, pulls a disbelieving face. “He told me you two kissed.”

-

“Do not ever look behind you,” Trent Ikithon says to the three statuesque figures in front of him,  “Only ever face forward. If you are ever paused, if you are ever unaware, that is when the assassin takes his shot.”

-

“What does this all mean to you?” Fjord asks as they lean over the edge of the boat.

“You have this important thing you are doing. You have your family, and you have your balls. It is important to you, so it is important to the group, so it is important to me.”

He almost doesn’t put that bridge in between. Caleb almost lets the two of them be bound by something more than one haphazard kiss, almost says  _ I’d sail to the ends of the oceans for you, there isn’t anything back there that I want you to see _ .

But he is, of course, a coward.

“That isn’t,” Fjord says, “strictly, what I meant. But, ah, ‘preciate it. Thank you, Caleb.”

-

They don’t make a habit of kissing each other, but they do make a habit of dancing around it. It is a sort of waltz, the rhythm of Fjord’s hand grazing his shoulder or the way he worries his lip as he asks for advice.

Caleb wants to pull away; he isn’t a good dancer, isn’t cut out for these games, doesn’t have the time, the place for it. But he cannot shake the ocean current influence of Fjord in his life. And it hurts, aches like long healed scars and burns like

Like saltwater in an open wound.

Caleb barely feels it when the blade of his own dagger cuts through his palm, the sting of it white noise against the adrenaline in his ears.

“Always” Fjord had said. Caleb knows more than he knows the way of North and his parents’ names that Fjord has no idea just how much that means, and Caleb is more than a little worried that he just might, and Caleb doesn’t know which one of those things would be worse.

His world gets blurry as Fjord mirrors the motion with his own sword, and Caleb feels the phantom drag of it against the skin of his throat as it cuts across Fjord’s arm. Pathetic, he really is pathetic.

Their cut hands come together, and it stings worse than a kiss but hurts his heart so much less. 

-

_ Fjord has such gentle eyes. Caleb recognizes facade when he sees it. What he does not recognize is kindness; he can only parse it out for it's unfamiliarity.  _

_ “You alright, Caleb?” _

_ The night sky surrounds Fjord. He is barely lit by starlight filtering through cold air, the forms of his face instead sharpened by the stark firelight. _

_ “You’re shiverin’, come here -” _

Caleb smacks his face, wincing as the motion reawakens the ache in his palm. The sudden pain of it startles him from his daydream, of, of something he’d rather forget. That he’d rather not let himself think about. 

The boat rocks, gentle, beneath him as he claws desperately for sleep. He feels it, for a moment, feels himself nodding off -

_ The points of Fjord’s claws are gentle where the dig into his shoulder and back. The organic warmth of him overshadows the pressure from the fire, and it is almost, in a way, pleasant. _

_ “Just a couple more hours ‘til we get Beau and Jester, I think.” _

_ “Ja. I think you should get Beau this time. She punches when she wakes up, and I do not think I am strong enough to get out of that without a, euh, broken shoulder. At least.” _

_ Fjord laughs. “Fair, fair. You must admit, though, Caleb, that you are quite talented. I,” he huffs out a breath, out of something like wonder, Caleb thinks but can’t admit, “I can’t fathom how you do all those things you do. Where did you learn-” _

Caleb quite nearly screams into the open air. He throws a pillow over his head and doesn’t think about it, and doesn’t think about it, and doesn’t think about it, and doesn’t sleep.

-

“Hey.” Beau snaps her fingers in front of his face. “I asked you a question.”

Caleb jumps, blinks, startled. “Oh. Oh, right. Ja, I suppose I do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR READING! i know this isnt comprehensive and perhaps not satisfying but i knew from the beginning that i did not have the time, skill, or patience required to accurately represent what these two would need to go through to have a functioning romance. i hope you all enjoyed anyway! as always, please like if you enjoyed and comment if you can!

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! please kudos if you enjoyed and comment as you can, as always!


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